The technical thug
.
Usually a systems programmer who has been forced into system administration ; writes scripts in a polyglot of the Bourne shell, sed, C, awk, perl, and APL.

The administrative fascist
.
Usually a retentive drone ( or rarely, a harridan ex-secretary ) who has been forced into system administration.

The maniac
.
Usually an aging cracker who discovered that neither the Mossad nor Cuba are willing to pay a living wage for computer espionage. Fell into system administration ; occasionally approaches major competitors with indesp schemes.

The idiot
.
Usually a cretin, morpohodite, or old Cobol programmer selected to be the system administrator by a committee of cretins, morphodites, and old Cobol programmers.

How to identify your system administrator :

Situation : Low disk space.

Technical thug
:
Writes a suite of scripts to monitor disk usage, maintain a database of historic disk usage, predict future disk usage via least squares regression analysis, identify users who are more than a standard deviation over the mean, and send mail to the offending parties. Places script in cron. Disk usage does not change, since disk-hogs, by nature, either ignore script-generated mail, or file it away in triplicate.

Situation : Excessive CPU usage.

Technical thug:
:
Writes a suite of scripts to monitor processes, maintain a database of CPU usage, identify processes more than a standard deviation over the norm, and renice offending processes. Places script in cron. Ends up renicing the production database into oblivion, bringing operations to a grinding halt, much to the delight of the xtrek freaks.

Administrative fascist:
:
Puts CPU usage policy in motd. Uses CPU quotas. Locks accounts that go over quota. Allows no exceptions, thus crippling development work, much to the delight of the xtrek freaks.

Situation : New account creation.

Technical thug
:
Writes perl script that creates home directory, copies in incomprehensible default environment, and places entries in /etc/passwd,/etc/shadow
, and /etc/group
. (By hand, NOT with passmgmt.) Slaps on setuid bit; tells a nearby secretary to handle new accounts. Usually, said secretary is still dithering over the difference between 'enter' and 'return'; and so, no new accounts are ever created.

Administrative fascist
:
Puts new account policy in motd. Since people without accounts cannot read the motd, nobody ever fulfills the bureaucratic requirements; and so, no new accounts are ever created.

Maniac
:
"If you're too stupid to break in and create your own account, I don't want you on the system. We've got too many goddamn sh*t-for-brains a**holes on this box anyway."

Situation : Root disk fails.

Technical thug
:
Repairs drive. Usually is able to repair filesystem from boot monitor. Failing that, front-panel toggles microkernel in and starts script on neighboring machine to load binary boot code into broken machine, reformat and reinstall OS. Lets it run over the weekend while he goes mountain climbing.

Administrative fascist
:
Begins investigation to determine who broke the drive. Refuses to fix system until culprit is identified and charged for the equipment.

Maniac, large system
:
Rips drive from system, uses sledgehammer to smash same to flinders. Calls manufacturer, threatens pets. Abuses field engineer while they put in a new drive and reinstall the OS.

Maniac, small system
:
Rips drive from system, uses ball-peen hammer to smash same to flinders. Calls Requisitions, threatens pets. Abuses bystanders while putting in new drive and reinstalling OS.

Hobbies, nontechnical :

Administrative fascist
:
Reads Readers Digest
and Mein Kampf
. Sometimes turns up car radio and sings along to John Denver. Golfs. Drinks gin martinis. Hangs out in yuppie bars and tries to pick up dominatrixes.

Maniac
:
Reads Utne Reader
and Mein Kampf
. Faithfully attends Dickies and Ramones concerts. Punches out people who say "virtual reality." Drinks damn near anything, but favors Wild Turkey, Black Bush, and grain alcohol. Hangs out in neighborhood bars and tries to pick up MOTAS by drinking longshoremen under the table .

Idiot
:
Reads Time
and Newsweek
-- and *believes* them. Drinks Jagermeister. Tries to pick up close blood relations -- often succeeds, producting next generation of idiots.

Compound system administrators :

Technical fascist
:
Hacks kernel & writes a horde of scripts to prevent folk from ever using more than their fair share of system resources. Resulting overhead and load brings system to its knees.

Technical maniac
:
Writes scripts that SEEM to be monitoring the system, but are actually encrypting large lists of passwords. Uses nearby nodes as beta test sites for worms.

Technical idiot
:
Writes superuser-run scripts that sooner or later do an rm -rf /

Fascistic maniac
:
At first hint of cracker incursions, whether real or imagined, shuts down system by triggering water-on-the-brain detectors and Halon system.

Fascistic idiot
:# cp /dev/null /etc/passwd

Maniacal idiot
:
Napalms the CPU.

Selected by Maddi Hausmann. Mail your joke ( jokes only ) to funny@clarinet.com
Attribute the joke's source if at all possible. A Daemon will auto-reply.